At present, cemented carbide containing WC as a main component or sintered alloys such as Ti-based cermet containing Ti as a main component are widely used to form members that require wear resistance, sliding property and chipping resistance, such as cutting tool, wear resisting member and sliding member. For the sintered alloys, development efforts have been made for new compositions that would improve the performance.
For example, Patent Document 1 discloses that the hardness, strength and fracture toughness can be improved, thereby to improve wear resistance and chipping resistance of cutting tools, by forming Ti-based cermet that has Ti-based main phase and dispersion phase such as oxide or boride of Mg, Al, Zr, Hf, Y and lanthanoid rare earth elements.
Patent Document 2 discloses that the corrosion resistance can be improved, in comparison with the conventional sintered carbide alloys, while maintaining the mechanical properties thereof, by forming a plunger used in a hyper compressor from cermet that has corrosion resistance and wear resistance and contains a ceramic component and a binder that contains an iron group metal as a main component while forming solid solution of Ru, Rh, Pd, Os, Ir, Pt or Au. This document describes an example of cermet wherein cemented carbide that is based on composition of WC—Co, and contains Ru or the like as well as Co added as the binder phase component in the cemented carbide alloy, and describes that corrosion resistance of the cemented carbide alloy is improved.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2003-200307    Patent Document 2: National Publication of Translated Version No. 11-502260